Interview: New GM CEO Mary Barra

Mary Barra, named the new CEO of General Motors this morning, stopped by PopMech's home recently to tell us and other Hearst editors about the state of the car business, where GM can (and can't) imitate Apple, and how to sell cars to millennials.

How do you see the state of the car business and your business in particular?

We're in a turning point on a lot of fronts. Whether you're in Thailand or Brazil or China or developed markets like Europe or North America, there are huge fuel economy and CO2 requirements that are changing the business and really changing the offerings that OEMs are going to be able to provide from a technology perspective. Those are driving a lot of electrification, driving a lot of efficiencies, and in some cases will cause people to trend toward our vehicles.

And then you look at what's also hitting from a consumer electronics technology [standpoint]. If you just think about everything we holdthat technology is finding its way into the vehicle, and people want it because they want to be efficient, they want what they're used toeverything at their fingertips. They expect that to be delivered in a vehicle. So that's another huge area from a competitive perspective.

And then I would say the fragmentation: There are so many niche vehicle entries that you're never sure when you're going to turn the next corner and going to have something that appeals to a broader population.

My role is to make sure that our team is on the front end to say, "Okay, what are the technological breakthroughs that are happening, is it having the most fuel-efficient diesel engine or the conventional combustion engine technology? How do we integrate all of the cellphone technologies and still do it in a way that we don't cause distracted driving?" If we don't regulate ourselves, we'll get regulated, and it'll be worse for the customer.

People are used to updating their digital technology every couple of years, but cars last a decade or more. How do you keep up?

Think about it. Yesterday I was downloading [the new iOS update] and it said, "For new features and bug fixes." And we all look at it and go, "Oh, good. Let me press the button and get the new thing." How do we make sure that what we're delivering to you is not going to require eight product fixes and then, especially in the infotainment space, how do we develop coverage over a three- or four-year period? Think about how fast technology moves in that space.

[Imagine if], instead of driving out of the dealership and your car losing value, your car just keeps getting better because we keep providing [updates] as technology advances, as you get a phone that's got more capability. But how do we stay with it and provide more technology in the vehicle so that it matches that phone that didn't even exist when the car was first developed?

So much of the technology we all want in our cars also takes our attention off the road, even if it's hands-free. How to you balance what customers what with their safety?

The research definitely says, whether you're listening to your texts or even if you're hands-free having a phone conversation, you're not as [focused] on the road. And I think we can all probably remember that time when you're on autopilot and you're on a conversation and you think, "Oh, I got here." But there's also the reality: What are people going to do anyway? I think a third of all safety instances we look at are unbelted drivers. That's been a law [against driving unbelted] for a long time. We know people are going to do it anyway.

The two areas of focus that I think we can dramatically improve are youth, when you first start to drive and you just don't have that experience of handling that first swerve, and, also, what can we put in vehicles to help the elderly? All the statistics say people are living longer and they want that mobility. I think when you look at a lot of the safety that's around the car, whether it's collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control, or all the assistance that you can get from a rear camera backing up, side-lane-departure warnings, and so on, I think that there's a lot that we can do to help the driver.

Popular Mechanics recently gave a Breakthrough Award to GM's semi-autonomous Super Cruise technology. How will that change the way we drive?

When you go from a car that is fully operated by the driver to fully autonomous driving, there are some little steps along the way. An autonomous vehicle is going to know the lanes and stay within the lane, so we're already providing that type of warning on our vehicles (unless you put your turn signal onthen it knows it doesn't have to alert you). With today's adaptive cruise control, you can set it to how far you want to follow the car in front of you, and, if you start to get too close, whether it's going to alert you or whether it's actually going to apply the brakes.

It's only a few more steps to point where you can actually take your hands off of the wheel. Super Cruise will follow the lanes of the road, follow the speed you set, and you can be hands-off driving on an expressway.

In many product areas, there's a big trend toward allowing the consumer to customize the product. Does the auto industry have some catching up to do here?

You can configure what you want in your cluster that you're going look at, what's most important to you. In some of our vehicles, what you have on the heads-up displaywhether it's the speed you're going, the speed limit on the road you're on, or what radio station you're tuned into, or your nav[is customizable]. There's quite a lot of configurability that is now coming in many of our vehicles, and even in some of the more base models. That's one area where we're thinking, "Okay, what information do you needand do you wantto drive?"

We have vehicles like the Opal Atom that we offer in Europe that offer consumers a huge ability to customize, from the color to the accessories. I'd say it's our vehicle that's the most customizable to give it quite a different look and feel.

There's a lot more that we can do to customize. I'd say if you look at our new full-size pickups, look at the amount of configurability and the features that we've put in the bed. There's more coming in that space as we look at new technologies and new materials. The OEM that allows for the most configurabilitybut still does it in a way that doesn't drive the cost to be prohibitiveis going to win.